1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to apparatus and methods for providing a firewall subscription service. More particularly, the present invention provides apparatus and methods for providing a firewall subscription service which protects customer computer systems, where the firewall subscription service includes a firewall between the customer computer systems and an external network.
2. Description of Related Art
Firewalls are known in the art to protect a network of computers when one or more of these computers are being accessed by an external network. For example, a company may have computer systems coupled together utilizing a company computer network. When these company computer systems are communicating with each other utilizing the company computer network, the likelihood of unauthorized attempts to access one of the company computers is low. This likelihood rises dramatically, however, when one of the company computer systems is coupled to an external network and receiving communications utilizing that external network. A firewall may be installed between the external network and the company's network of computer systems. The firewall then can be used to protect the company's computer systems against unauthorized accesses transmitted via the external network.
A firewall is typically implemented in a proxy server which is outside of the company's computer network. Communications transmitted to any of the customer's computer systems via the external network are routed through the firewall in the proxy server. The firewall then determines whether or not to forward the communications to the customer computer systems.
A problem arises, however, when an individual user, such as a home office user, is coupled to the external network. The home office computer is vulnerable to attacks from the external network. It is difficult, however, for home office computer users, such as individual computer users, to implement a firewall.
Therefore, a need exists for a firewall subscription service and method to which different customers may subscribe for protecting the customers' computers, where each subscriber is an independent, paying party.